Cue the BBQ

With Fourth of July weekend upon us, it’s pretty much peak summer. Maybe that means you’ll put on your flip-flops, fly an American flag or simply try to stay cool in a heat wave. If you invite people over for grilled food, though, will you ask them to come to a “barbecue,” “barbeque” or “BBQ”?

You might be inclined to simply write “BBQ,” the extremely popular abbreviation for a word whose most common spelling has no “Q.”

A screenshot from Stylebot on Slack that reads: Use "barbecue" instead of "BBQ," "bar-b-cue" or "barbeque." It's both a noun and a verb: "They're going to barbecue chicken for dinner." "He had never tried Texas barbecue."

Here’s where we’ll cue the dictionary entry on “cue,” though, to note that one of the word’s definitions is “the letter q.” So the world makes sense again.

That is, until someone invites you to a “BBC.”

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